list-the-contents-of-a-tar-or-targz-file

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List the contents of a tar or tar.gz file
last updated December 21, 2018 in Categories BASH Shell, FreeBSD, HP-UX Unix, Linux, Solaris-Unix, Ubuntu Linux, UNIX
How do I list the contents of a tar or tar.gz file on a Linux, OS X, and Unix-like system? How do I view contents of tar file without extracting it on Linux? How can I list contents of tar file on Unix?

GNU/tar or BSD/tar is an archiving program designed to store and extract files from an archive file known as a tarfile. You can create a tar file or compressed tar file tar. However, sometimes you need to list the contents of tar or tar.gz file on screen before extracting all files.
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How to view contents of tar file without extracting it
To view a detailed table of contents for archive called my-data.tar.gz, use the following syntax:
tar -ztvf my-data.tar.gz
tar -tvf my-data.tar.gz
tar -tvf my-data.tar.gz 'search-patter'

Examples: List the contents of a tar or tar.gz file
Let us see some examples:

Task: List the contents of a tar file
Use the following command:
$ tar -tvf file.tar

Sample outputs:

Fig.01: List archive contents to screen
Fig.01: List archive contents to screen
Task: List the contents of a tar.gz file
Use the following command:
$ tar -ztvf file.tar.gz

Task: List the contents of a tar.bz2 file
Use the following command:
$ tar -jtvf file.tar.bz2

Task: Search for specific files
In this example, look for *.pl (all perl files) inside a detailed table of contents for archive called projects.tar.gz:
$ tar -tvf projects.tar.bz2 '*.pl'

Where,

t: List the contents of an archive.
v: Verbosely list files processed (display detailed information).
z: Filter the archive through gzip so that we can open compressed (decompress) .gz tar file.
j: Filter archive through bzip2, use to decompress .bz2 files.
f filename: Use archive file called filename.
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Posted by: Vivek Gite
The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

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Notable Replies
nixcraft says:
Assuming that file name is demo.tar.gz, run:

tar ztvf demo.tar
Look for 4th column:

drwxr-xr-x vivek/vivek       0 2018-12-31 19:13 t/
-rw-r--r-- vivek/vivek      73 2018-12-31 19:13 t/resolv.conf
-rw-r--r-- vivek/vivek    1123 2018-12-31 19:13 t/hosts
Continue the discussion www.nixcraft.com
1 more reply

Participants


Historical Comment Archive
Comments 25 comment
Shashi says: September 2, 2008 at 6:19 am
Thanks a lot Vivek…This article is very useful for me….

Bolser says: September 15, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Perfect!

I don’t know why I always forget this!

Also the ‘j’ trick is killer! I always just try to use ‘z’, and then give up when bzip won’t play. Now I just need to remember … use j in stead of z when bzip.

jitedar says: December 24, 2008 at 10:37 pm
great and thx..

asd says: January 25, 2009 at 4:28 am
thanks!

Amit Verma says: June 3, 2009 at 10:41 am
Rule of Thumb –
{
Use ‘z’ while compressing/decompressing/listing the file with GZIP.
Use ‘j’ while compressing/decompressing/listing the file with BZIP2.
}
– with tar command.

Thanks
Amit Verma

Jeremy says: July 16, 2009 at 11:16 pm
The exact thing I was looking for, worked like a charm! :)

Ankur Sinha says: August 27, 2009 at 9:57 am
Good Work!!!
Thanks!!!
keep it up!!!
;)

Nomaun Khan says: September 22, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Thanks for the helpful contests

kiran says: October 23, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Thanks a lot for this post guys …:)

Keep it up …

Chris Henley says: February 16, 2010 at 9:22 pm
thanks. I’m too lazy to read the man page.

ode says: September 8, 2010 at 10:11 am
$ tar -tvf file.tar works for all three file formats.

$ unzip -l works for zip files

Stefan says: July 17, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Thanks it works fine however do you know if there is a faster way maybe? I have a 6GB gzip file and it takes ages to list the contents. For smaller files it is ok but for big files it is a pain.

Fixticks says: July 21, 2011 at 9:25 pm
man pages are too long, thanks vivek.
@Stefan, u cud try

tar -ztvf file.tar.gz > files.txt

now i assume u may be looking for a certain file in that big gzip, so

cat files.txt | grep certain_file_name_or_part_of_it

and u can now check for multiple names without the initial wait of listing the big gz’s files.
I know this coz i have just done it thanks to reading this blog.thx again Vivek.

Liban says: November 25, 2011 at 12:16 am
I’m trying to find and display, but this isn’t working for me..

find -name “.gz” | tar -tvf {};

brisohn says: May 1, 2012 at 8:09 am
try this:
find -name “*.gz” -exec tar -tvf {} \;

Moron says: March 12, 2012 at 9:31 pm
I am getting following error while looking for content of the tar file

$ tar -ztvf
tar: illegal option — z

Usage: tar -{c|r|t|u|x} [ -BdDEFhilmopRsUvw ] [ -Number ] [ -f TarFile ]
[ -b Blocks ] [ -S [ Feet ] | [ Feet@Density ] | [ Blocksb ] ]
[ -L InputList ] [-X ExcludeFile] [ -N Blocks ] [ -C Directory ] File …
Usage: tar {c|r|t|u|x} [ bBdDEfFhilLXmNopRsSUvw[0-9] ]
[ Blocks ] [ TarFile ] [ InputList ] [ ExcludeFile ]
[ [ Feet ] | [ Feet@Density ] | [ Blocksb ] ] [-C Directory ] File …

Piyush says: January 16, 2013 at 1:40 pm
-z option option is not working on AIX

Vivek Gite says: March 7, 2016 at 1:28 pm
Try following on AIX unix:
gzip -d < file.tar.gz | tar xvf -

OR use following two commands:
gunzip file.tar.gz
tar -xvf file.tar

Read tar and gunzip man pages for more info on your AIX system.

Suresh says: July 17, 2012 at 7:06 am
Sequence is important ! tar -ztfv will fail with error ‘v’ not found where as tar -ztvf works – since you need to specify the filename after the f option. Cheers!

Sunny Arora says: September 11, 2014 at 7:03 am
I want to list the files out of file.tar.bz2 and grep a pattern (say all .c files).
But executing the command ” tar -tjvf fiel.tar.bz2 | grep .c ” doesn’t give the desired output.
Please suggest

mateen says: March 7, 2016 at 11:09 am
tar -tjvf fiel.tar.bz2 | grep *.c would do

Vivek Gite says: March 7, 2016 at 1:09 pm
A better option:
tar -tjvf fiel.tar.bz2 '*.c'